Scene Of The Crime: The Deputy's Proof
Carla Cassidy
This deputy was looking for redemption from a mysterious beauty…Ever since Savannah Sinclair’s sister was killed, her ghost has become part of local lore. But deputy Josh Griffin knows the truth behind this charade. And when Savannah is attacked, Josh vows to keep the grieving beauty safe. He soon finds that even though he’s protecting Savannah, it's his heart that's under fire…Savannah only posed as her sister’s spirit to keep her sibling alive—not to put herself in harm’s way. But as Josh, her "bodyguard," stirs up feelings she thought long dead, Savannah can’t help but wonder: Can her lone protector keep yet another Sinclair sister from being murdered?
Every muscle in his body stiffened as he thought he heard a faint cry coming from the hole in the ground.
He turned on his flashlight and shone it down, seeing nothing but earth.
Had he heard her crying? Weeping because she knew this was the end of her walks? Should he go down and console her? Or let her cry in private? He had a feeling that if she was crying, she wouldn’t welcome his presence.
He heard her again, only this time instead of weeping, it sounded like a scream of terror. With his gun in one hand, his flashlight in the other and adrenaline pumping through his body, he dropped down into the hole.
The first thing he saw was the penlight beam, shining at him from the floor in the distance. What he didn’t see was any sign of Savannah.
“Savannah!” He yelled her name, and it echoed in the air.
He quickly walked forward, his gun leading the way and his heart pounding a million beats a minute. Where was Savannah? Why was her flashlight on the ground? What in the hell was happening?
He didn’t know, but he wouldn’t give up until he found her.
Scene of the Crime: The Deputy’s Proof
Carla Cassidy
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CARLA CASSIDY is a New York Times bestselling author who has written more than one hundred books for Mills & Boon. Carla believes the only thing better than curling up with a good book to read is sitting down at the computer with a good story to write. She’s looking forward to writing many more books and bringing hours of pleasure to readers.
Contents
Cover (#u44fd52e0-80d0-5b71-9253-fc79fbb6dd0e)
Introduction (#u0d7248c0-7470-5bb0-a739-6330a989f9c8)
Title Page (#u3f888bdb-b009-5ff4-bba5-b8f4fcf8233d)
About the Author (#ucf8b12fb-f159-51d0-918b-f37c410192ce)
Chapter One (#u11f1353d-bba2-5e0d-9094-94cf6524c8f0)
Chapter Two (#u126b3556-6e70-50a1-bea2-c9daf376f089)
Chapter Three (#u67fd5c5a-04ca-53b0-b5d4-2f39c488c660)
Chapter Four (#u0d6ffc9d-01b0-5366-bcb9-804e14a88854)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_0b58ed92-cea8-5582-9560-1cfdf9d3584b)
It was a perfect night for a ghost walk. The Mississippi moon was nearly hidden from view by the low-lying fog that seeped across the land and invaded the streets of the small town of Lost Lagoon.
Savannah Sinclair retied the double-beamed flashlight that hung at her waist beneath a white, gauzy, floor-length gown. She used talcum powder to lighten her face and knew that most people would think her actions were more than a little crazy.
Maybe she’d been a little crazy for the past two years, since the night her older sister, her best friend, Shelly, had been murdered and found floating in the lagoon.
From that night forward, Savannah’s life had been forever changed. She had been forever changed, and what she planned to do at midnight tonight just proved that Shelly’s death still haunted her in a profound way she couldn’t get past.
She stared at her ghostly countenance in the bathroom mirror and wondered, if Shelly’s murder had been solved and her killer arrested, would things be different?
She whirled away from the mirror and left the bathroom. The clock on the nightstand in the bedroom indicated that it was eleven thirty. Time to move.
She turned off all the lights in the four-bedroom house that had once been home to her family, grabbed a palm-sized penlight and then slipped out the back door.
The dark night closed in around her, and she glanced at her nearest neighbor’s house, satisfied that all the lights were off and her neighbor, Jeffrey Allen, was surely in bed. She used the penlight in her hand to guide her toward a large bush at the back of the yard.
Shoving several of the leafy branches aside, she revealed a hole big enough for a person to drop into. She knew there were earthen steps to aid in the three-foot drop, and she easily accomplished it, finding herself at the beginning of a narrow earthen tunnel.
She’d discovered the tunnel last summer when she’d been working in the yard. Initially she had to crouch for several feet before the tunnel descended deep enough that she could stand in an upright position and walk.
Half the town already thought she was crazy, gone around the bend because of her parents’ abandonment, her brother’s rages and the murder of her sister.
If they only knew what she did on moonless nights when she wasn’t working the night shift at the Pirate’s Inn, they’d probably have her locked up in an insane asylum for the rest of her life. But there was a rhyme and reason to her madness.
The tunnel system was like a spider web running under the town, although Savannah had only explored one corridor, the one that would take her directly to the place where her sister had been murdered.
She moved confidently with the aid of the bright but tiny beam of her penlight leading the way. It had been rumored that Lost Lagoon had once been home to a band of pirates, and she suspected these tunnels had been made by them years and years ago.
She occasionally moved by dark passageways she had never explored and wondered if anyone had been in them in the last hundred years or so.
She hadn’t told anyone of her discovery of the tunnels. They were her secret, her voyage to the last link to her sister. It took her a little over fifteen minutes to reach her destination, a set of six old wooden planks embedded into the ground that led up to another hole beneath a bush at the base of a cypress tree.
She shut off her penlight, climbed up the planks and crouched behind the tree trunk. At this time on a Friday night, most of the town would be at Jimmy’s Place, a popular bar and grill on Main Street.
But moonless Friday nights when the fog rolled in—the teenagers in town knew those were the nights that Shelly’s ghost walked the night.
Savannah could hear them, a small group of teenage girls giggling behind a row of bushes that separated the swampy lagoon from the edge of town. Set in the center of the row of bushes was a stone bench where her sister and her boyfriend, Bo McBride, used to sit at night and talk about their future, but Shelly had never gotten a future.
Between the bushes and the swamp was just enough solid ground for a “ghost” to walk in front of the bushes and the bench and disappear into the wooded, swampy area on the other side.
She remained hidden for several minutes until she thought it was just about midnight, and then she turned on the flashlight strapped around her waist beneath the gauzy white gown. The double-sided beam produced an otherworldly glow from her head to her toes.
Performance time, she thought. Her role as Shelly’s ghost required very little of her, an appropriate costume but no script to memorize. She started to walk across the “stage.” She walked slowly, her head half-turned away and her long dark hair hiding her features from her audience.
“There she is!” A young female voice squealed.
“It’s Shelly. It’s really Shelly,” another voice cried out.
Savannah embraced the sound of her sister’s name into her heart as she continued her walk. Tears burned in her eyes, but she swallowed against them. Shelly’s ghost didn’t cry. She just walked across the place where she’d been murdered and then disappeared almost as quickly as she’d appeared.
To the continuing squeals of her sister’s name, Savannah reached the woods on the other side of the “stage.” She shut off the flashlight at her waist and headed for a tangled growth of vines behind which was the small entrance of a cave. The opening of the cave was hidden and couldn’t be seen unless you knew what you were looking for.
She quickly moved the concealing vines aside and clicked on her little penlight, using it after she’d entered the fairly large cave that led downhill. The cave narrowed somewhat as it continued but remained wide enough that a pirate could push trunks of treasure or buckets of jewels through it.
This passageway eventually intersected with the one that would take her to her backyard, a perfect escape route for the ghost of the dead.
She moved quickly, eager now to get back to the house where she lived. It was the house she’d grown up in, but it hadn’t felt like home since two months after Shelly’s murder, when her parents had left town and moved to a small retirement community in Florida.
They’d left the house for Savannah and her older brother, Mac, to live in. Mac had married and moved out months before, leaving Savannah in the house that contained far too many haunting memories.
She felt a cathartic relief and a little bit of guilt as she reached the earthen steps that would bring her up into her backyard.
Everyone in Lost Lagoon loved a good ghost story, she told herself. The town was steeped in stories of the walking dead. The ghosts of dead pirates were rumored to walk the hallways of Pirate’s Inn.
Savannah had been working there as night manager for a little over a year, and while she occasionally heard odd bumps and thumps in the night, she’d never seen a ghost.
But the rumors of sightings of apparitions were repeated again and again by thrilled townspeople and occasional tourists. The ghost of an old, toothless hag supposedly appeared in the alley beside the Lost Lagoon Cafe, and several people had sworn they’d seen the faint wisp of ghostly figures around Mama Baptiste’s Apothecary Shop.
She turned off her penlight, stepped up out of the tunnel and squeaked in surprise as she saw a tall, dark figure standing before her. She fumbled to turn on her penlight once again and found herself face-to-face with Deputy Josh Griffin.
“Hi, Savannah. Busy night?” he asked.
Her heart sank as she realized she’d been busted.
* * *
JOSH SHONE HIS own flashlight on the slender, dark-haired woman. Her doe-like brown eyes were huge in a face that was unnaturally pale. Her lower lip trembled even as she raised her chin and glared at him defiantly.
“If you’re going to arrest me, then just get on with it,” she exclaimed.
“How about we get out of the dark and go inside and talk about my options,” he replied.
Savannah Sinclair and the murder of her sister, Shelly, had haunted Josh for a long time. Before the murder Savannah had been a lively, charming twenty-seven-year-old who was often seen out and about town.
“Okay,” she replied. Despite her initial upthrust of her chin, as he walked just behind her he saw her shoulders slump forward and felt the energy that had momentarily radiated from her disappear.
Despite the ridiculous outfit she wore, he noticed the slight sway of her slender hips beneath the gauzy material, could smell the faint scent of a fresh floral perfume that emanated from her.
The few times he’d seen her since her sister’s murder, he’d been filled with guilt. The consensus at the time had been that Shelly had been murdered by her then-boyfriend, Bo McBride, and that law enforcement simply hadn’t found the evidence to make an arrest. Josh knew how little had actually been done in the investigation.
But that was then and this was now, and it had taken him weeks to figure out the mystery of “Shelly’s ghost.” He now had questions for Savannah that he wanted answered.
She opened the back door that led into the kitchen. She turned on the overhead light and gestured him toward a chair at the round wooden table.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to change clothes before you decide to take me in,” she said. She didn’t give him a chance to reply but instead left the room.
Josh sat in a chair at the table and looked around. Red roosters danced across the bottoms of beige curtains at the window, and a hen and rooster salt and pepper shaker set perched on the pristine stove top. Other than a coffeemaker, the countertops were bare.
There was an emptiness, a void of life in the room, as if it were a designer home where nobody really lived. He heard water running in another room, and a few minutes later, Savannah returned.
She’d changed out of the gauzy gown and into a pair of jeans that hugged her long slender legs and a blue-and-gold T-shirt advertising the Pirate’s Inn. She sat across from him at the table. She’d obviously washed her face, for her color was more natural. Her cheeks were faintly pink.
“So, are you going to arrest me?” she asked. Gone was the defiance, leaving behind only a weary resignation in her voice.
“What would I arrest you for? Impersonating a ghost?” he asked with a touch of amusement. “I don’t want to arrest you, Savannah. I want to talk to you. What are you doing? Why are you pretending to be Shelly’s ghost?”
Her long-lashed brown eyes gazed at him, and she tucked a strand of the long, silky-looking dark hair behind one ear. “How did you know that I’d appear out of the bush in my backyard?”
“I’ve been tracking the sightings of Shelly’s ghost for about a month,” he replied. “I saw your performance a couple of weeks ago and instantly realized it was you, but I couldn’t figure out how you appeared and disappeared and got back here without anyone seeing you. So, I’ve been staking out your house and watching your movements.”
Her face paled slightly. “You’ve been stalking me?”
“Basically, yeah,” he admitted. “But I have to say, you aren’t an exciting person to stalk.”
Her cheeks grew pink again. “Sorry if I bored you with my life. Aren’t there other people you should be stalking? Don’t you have any real crime fighting to do?”
“Things have been pretty quiet since we managed to get Roger Cantor arrested,” he replied. The affable coach of the high school had been exposed as a deadly stalker and was now behind bars. “And you didn’t answer my question. What are you doing pretending to be Shelly’s ghost?”
“Entertaining the locals,” she replied airily, but her dark eyes simmered with a depth of emotion that belied her words. “And you didn’t answer mine. How exactly did you figure out that I’d appear by the bush in the backyard after one of my ghostly walks?”
“The last time you pulled your stunt, I was here, watching the backyard to see if you’d sneak across the lawn. To my surprise, you came up from under the ground.”
Josh had always been attracted to Savannah’s high spirits, her beauty and more than a touch of sexy flirtation that had always lit her eyes when they happened to encounter each other. But that had been before her sister’s murder, and the woman who sat across from him now appeared achingly fragile, a mere shell of what she’d once been.
A touch of guilt swept through him again. As a lawman, his job was to solve crimes and get the guilty behind bars. But officially Shelly’s case remained an open one, without resolution.
“There’s a tunnel,” she finally said. Her finger traced an indecipherable pattern on the top of the wooden table, and her gaze followed her finger’s movements.
“A tunnel?” Josh felt like he was attempting to pull a confession from a hardened criminal.
She stopped the movement of her hand and looked at him once again. “There’s a tunnel that runs from the backyard to a tree near the lagoon where Shelly was murdered. I discovered it about a year ago.”
“What would a tunnel be doing in your backyard?” he asked.
Her slender shoulders moved up and down in a shrug. “I guess you’d have to ask the person who dug it, but it looks like it was made a long, long time ago. Maybe it was used to transport goods from the lagoon to here by the pirates who once lived around here.”
Josh frowned thoughtfully. Lost Lagoon had a history rich in pirate lore. He supposed it was possible that pirates could have unloaded their treasures onto little boats to navigate the small lagoon and then bring them here, where they might have had an inland camp.
He focused his attention back on her. “You haven’t answered my question. Why, Savannah? Why are you doing this?”
He studied her intently, wanting her to explain, to tell him what the payoff was for pretending to be her sister’s ghost. She frowned and looked out the darkened window.
Josh was a patient man. It was one of his strengths as a deputy. He leaned back in his chair, not willing to go anywhere until he had the answer he needed from her.
Was she crazy, as many people thought? Had the murder of her sister, the destruction of her family and her own isolation from everything and everyone caused mental illness of some sort?
She finally looked back at him and leaned forward. Her hair came untucked from the back of her ear, the long dark strands shining beneath the hanging light over the table.
“A month after Shelly’s murder, my parents forbade us ever to speak her name again,” she began. Her dark gaze went over his shoulder to the bare wall behind him. “They packed all of her things away in the storage shed out back and pretended she had never existed.”
She looked back at him, her eyes filled with a depth of simmering emotion. “I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to my sister, my best friend and the person I’d shared a bedroom with since I was born. As time passed and Bo left town, everyone stopped talking about Shelly. It was as if she had never existed anywhere at any time. Even after my parents left town and I tried to talk to Mac about Shelly, he shut me down. He was so angry, still is so angry. He definitely didn’t want to hear Shelly’s name or anything I had to say about her.”
Josh understood her pain. He’d lost a twin brother when he’d been fifteen years old, and he knew for the rest of his life he’d feel as if an integral piece of himself was missing.
“I found the tunnel a year ago,” Savannah continued. “It took me weeks to get up the nerve to go down inside and explore where it went. When I finally did and realized it came up next to the place where Shelly had been murdered, I came up with the ghost plan.”
“But why? What do you get out of pretending to be her ghost?”
“I get to hear squealing teenagers say her name. I make sure nobody forgets about her. I keep her alive by pretending to be her apparition in death.” She shook her head. “I know it sounds crazy and you probably can’t understand it, but for those few moments when people are crying out Shelly’s name, I feel better. I feel as if she’s still with me.”
“It’s dangerous,” Josh replied. “You’re sneaking out of your house alone in the middle of the night to go down into a tunnel that you don’t even know is safe. There could be a cave-in, or somebody could come after you while you’re doing your little show.”
A whisper of a smile curved her lips, and for a moment Josh saw the semblance of the young woman she’d once been. “Actually, a couple of weeks ago Bo McBride did come after me. Apparently his new girlfriend, Claire Silver, told him about Shelly’s ghost and encouraged him to see the spectacle. I’d just finished my walk when he jumped over the bushes and chased me into the woods. I jumped into my rabbit hole and disappeared.”
“But that’s my point,” Josh protested. “You disappear down that tunnel, and if anything happened to you, nobody would know you were in trouble.” He leaned forward. “I want to check out this tunnel.”
Her eyes widened, and her gaze slid away from his. “I don’t think that’s necessary. I’ve been using it for almost a year, and it’s perfectly safe.”
“I’d still like to check it out for myself,” he countered. She looked at him again, and he knew in his gut that she was hiding something. “I figure you’ve got two choices.”
“And I figure I’m not going to like either one of them,” she retorted.
“You can take me down through that tunnel and I can see for myself that it’s safe and secure, or I can get a backhoe in here to fill in the entrance in your backyard.”
She sat up straighter in her chair, a flash of anger in her eyes. “You can’t do that. My backyard is private property.”
“I can do it,” he replied calmly. “That hole is a danger. A small child could fall down it. I can make a case to have it filled in without your permission for the safety of the community.”
She glared at him. It was the most emotion he’d seen from her since her sister’s death. “Fine, I’ll take you down into the tunnel.”
Josh nodded and stood. “Why don’t we plan on around noon tomorrow? I’ll come here and we can check it out.”
She stood as well, her body vibrating with tension. “Don’t take this away from me, Josh. It’s all I have in my life.”
He had a ridiculous impulse to step forward and pull her into his arms. Instead he stepped toward the back door. “I’m just trying to keep you safe, Savannah. That’s my job.”
“If I felt unsafe, I would have called Sheriff Walker,” she replied.
“Maybe you aren’t in a mental state to know what’s safe and what isn’t.”
He knew he’d spoken the wrong words by the flash of unbridled annoyance that filled her eyes and stiffened her stance.
“Contrary to popular belief, I’m perfectly sane. I know people think I’ve become a weird recluse who only comes out at night to work at the local haunted hotel, but that’s my choice. The way I live my life is nobody’s business but my own.”
“Point taken,” Josh replied. He opened the back door. “I’ll see you at noon tomorrow. Good night, Savannah.”
She shut the door behind him with more force than was necessary, and he headed for his patrol car parked at the curb in front of her house.
He got into the car and started the engine but didn’t immediately drive away. Instead he sat and stared at her house. No lights shone from the front windows just as very little light had shone from her eyes on the occasional times he’d seen her in the last two years.
Despite his intense attraction to her two years ago, since that time he’d tried not to think about her. It was only curiosity about Shelly’s “ghost” that had brought him here tonight.
Guilt was a terrible thing, he thought as he finally pulled away from the curb. Savannah was broken. She’d been broken since Shelly’s murder...a murder that had never been investigated as vigorously as it should have been.
As a deputy, Josh had followed orders, but as a decent man, he had known nobody was doing enough to close the case. Closure might have made a difference to Savannah.
Yes, she was broken, but he had no hero complex. He wasn’t the man to fix her, but what he could do was make sure she was safe if she insisted on doing her ghostly walks.
He couldn’t go back in time and do things differently in the case of her sister, but he could see to it that if Savannah insisted on continuing her haunting ghostly walks, at least the tunnel she used was safe.
Chapter Two (#ulink_4e600b90-98f7-5c0d-b41e-7bc124491e59)
Savannah awoke with the unaccustomed emotion of anger tightening her chest. It had been so long since she hadn’t awakened with the familiar grief that it took her a moment to recognize the new feeling that pressed so tight inside her.
Then she remembered the night before and Deputy Josh Griffin and knew immediately he was the source of her unusual anger. He was going to be here at noon and insist he go down into the tunnel with her, and when he did, he’d ruin everything.
He’d see that it wasn’t just a single tunnel but rather a network of tunnels. Word would get out, people would start to explore and her nights of ghost walking would be over forever. She’d never hear Shelly’s name again except in the deepest recesses of her broken heart.
She rolled over in bed and stared at the opposite side of the bedroom. The wall was covered with pictures of Shelly and Savannah, hugging each other when they were ten and eleven, Shelly dressed for prom at sixteen with Savannah posing with her, moments captured in time of the closeness of the two.
A desk held items that had been special to Shelly—the dried flower corsage that Bo McBride had given to her on prom night, a framed picture of the Manhattan skyline at twilight, a ceramic frog and a variety of other knickknacks.
Savannah had unpacked the items from the shed after Mac had moved out, comforted by the little pieces of Shelly that now remained in the room the two had shared for so many years of their lives.
She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Just after ten. Normally she’d sleep until at least noon or one due to her overnight work hours at the Pirate’s Inn. She’d be sucking wind tonight if she didn’t get a nap in sometime during the afternoon or early evening.
Minutes later, as she stood beneath the shower spray, her thoughts turned to Josh Griffin. Before Shelly’s death, she’d thought him one of the most handsome, hot single men in town.
He’d only grown more handsome in the past two years. As he’d sat at the table the night before, she couldn’t help but notice on some level how his dark hair enhanced the crystal blue of his eyes.
It had been impossible not to notice how his broad shoulders had filled out his khaki deputy shirt and that he’d smelled of spicy cologne that had stirred her senses on some primal level.
She didn’t want to like Josh Griffin. As far as she was concerned, he was just part of the law enforcement in town that had botched her sister’s murder case. And now he was going to ruin the only thing that made her feel just a little bit alive.
She dressed in a pair of denim shorts and a light blue T-shirt and then made a pot of coffee. The silence of the house was comfortable to her. When she and Mac had shared the house, there had always been shouting and cursing. Now the silence was like an old familiar friend.
Mac had been one of the loudest voices proclaiming the guilt of Bo McBride in Shelly’s murder. But he’d always thought Bo wasn’t good enough for her. Sometimes Savannah wondered about her brother...but she never allowed the perverse thought to take hold.
She sat at the table to drink her coffee and stared out the window that gave her not only a view of her own backyard but also a partial view of her neighbor’s.
Jeffrey Allen was out there now, weeding a flower bed, his bald head covered against the July sun by a large straw hat. Jeffrey wasn’t a pleasant man. In his midfifties, he worked as a mechanic at the local car repair shop and for the past five years or so had had a contentious relationship with the Sinclair family.
She only hoped he finished his lawn work before Josh arrived to check out the tunnel. The last thing she wanted to do was give Jeffrey any ammunition to work with to get her out of this house.
He’d made it clear that he wanted to buy her house for some of his family members to move into, but Savannah had no plans ever to sell.
By eleven forty-five, Jeffrey had disappeared from his yard and gone back into his house, and a nervous energy flooded through Savannah’s veins. Within a few minutes, Josh would arrive and destroy the one thing that had kept Shelly relevant beyond her death.
Savannah was still seated at the kitchen table when Josh appeared at the back door. She wanted to pretend he wasn’t there, ignore the soft knock he delivered, but she knew he wasn’t going to just go away, especially since he could see her through the window.
Reluctantly she got up to let him inside. Josh worked the night shift, like Savannah, and so instead of his uniform, he was clad in a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt.
With his slightly unruly black hair and his usual sexy grin curving sensual lips, he looked like the proverbial irresistible bad boy. He was a bad boy. He was about to rock her world in a very adverse way.
“Good afternoon,” he said when she opened the door.
“Not particularly,” she replied, embracing the alien emotion of the anger she’d awakened with. It felt so fresh, so different from the pervasive grief that had possessed her for so long. “It would be a good day if you’d kept your nose out of my business.”
He frowned, the expression doing nothing to distract from his handsome, chiseled features. “Savannah, I’m not the enemy here.”
Yes, he was. He just didn’t realize it yet. Right now he was the beginning of the end of her world. With even Shelly’s ghost gone, Savannah didn’t know who she was or where she belonged.
“Let’s just get this over with,” she replied. She noticed that he carried a high-beam flashlight, and she walked to the cabinet under the kitchen sink and grabbed a flashlight for herself.
As she followed Josh out the back door, she hoped his shoulders got stuck in the hole, then realized he would probably somehow manage to get out anyway and bring in that backhoe he’d talked about the night before.
She just had to come to terms with the fact that he was about to discover not just her secret, but a secret that had been hidden from the entire town for who knew how long.
As they reached the bush, she stepped in front of him and caught a scent of the sexy cologne she’d noticed the night before. It only aggravated her more. “I’ll go first,” she said and bent down to shove aside the branches to reveal the hole.
She used the narrow earthen steps to go down. “Okay, your turn,” she said and moved away so that he could drop in.
He didn’t use the steps but landed gracefully on the ground. Apparently a three-foot drop wasn’t a big deal for a tall man with long legs.
He clicked on his flashlight and shone it straight ahead. “Wow, who would have thought?” he exclaimed in shock.
From this vantage point, the other passageway entrances weren’t visible. “See, it’s safe as can be,” she said. “The earth is hard-packed and solid.”
He shone his light beyond her. “I want you to take me to where you come up to do your nightly walks by the swamp.”
This was what she’d been hoping to avoid, but she knew there was no way to stop him. “Follow me,” she said in resignation. It would take only about three minutes for him to know that “her” tunnel wasn’t the only one down here.
“Did it ever occur to you that the person who murdered Shelly might have used this tunnel to escape the scene of the crime?” he asked after only a step or two.
“You mean the murderer you all never caught?” The anger was back. She stopped and turned to face him, her light shining in his eyes.
He winced. “You don’t believe that Bo McBride was responsible?”
“No, even though nearly everyone else in town, including all of you lawmen, believed him guilty. I never believed in my heart that he’d hurt Shelly. He loved her more than he loved himself.”
“Did you know he’s back in town to stay?” Josh asked. “And turn that light away,” he added with an edge of irritation.
She lowered the beam to the center of his chest. “He’s been back for over a month. I know he’s living with Claire Silver because the creepy stalker that was after her burned Bo’s family house down. I also know he and Claire are trying to find the truth about who murdered Shelly. When he chased me that night, I already suspected he was back in Lost Lagoon to stay.”
“Look, I’m not down in this dungeon to reinvestigate your sister’s murder. I’m sorry how things turned out and that nobody was ever arrested, but that’s not why we’re down here.”
“You were the one who brought it up,” she replied.
Suddenly she just wanted to get this over with, get back into her silent house where she lived with just memories of the family who had once filled the quiet with life.
She turned around and continued walking, and when she came to the first passageway that shot off the main tunnel, she heard Josh gasp in surprise.
“I thought you said this was just one tunnel, from your backyard directly to the edge of the swamp.” He shone his light down the new tunnel.
Once again she turned to face him. “I lied. There are tons of tunnels down here. I think they run under the entire town, and now that you know that, everything is going to be ruined for me. You’ll feel obligated to tell somebody, and word will get out, and there will be tons of people down here exploring everywhere.”
To her horror, she burst into tears...the first tears she had shed since the day they had buried her sister.
* * *
JOSH WASN’T SURE what shocked him more, the discovery of the other tunnels or Savannah’s unexpected tears. No, they weren’t just simple tears. She leaned against the earthen wall and sobbed as if her heart was breaking.
“Savannah,” he said softly, and he touched her arm. She jerked away and cried harder. “Savannah, please don’t cry.” Not knowing what to do, unaccustomed to sobbing females, he tucked his flashlight into the back of the waist of his pants and pulled her into his arms.
She stiffened against him and then melted into him, crying into the hollow of his throat. Although she was tall, she felt small and fragile in his arms. Her hair smelled of wildflowers, and she fit neatly against him.
It lasted only a couple of heartbeats, and then she twirled out of his embrace and swiped at her tears as if angry at herself for the display of emotion. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
She faced him, the eerie illumination of their flashlights casting dancing shadows on her features. “You just have no idea what you’re taking away from me.”
“Why don’t we continue on, and we can talk about it all when we’re above ground again,” he suggested and pulled his flashlight out of his waistband.
She nodded and turned to lead the way once again. Josh tried to keep pace with her, but he slowed each time he passed yet another tunnel that branched off the one they followed. And there were plenty of branches.
Throughout the walk, he could tell they were descending, although it was impossible to tell just how deep they were beneath the ground.
He counted at least seven branches of darkened tunnels by the time they reached the end of the main one. Plank steps led upward. They hadn’t spoken a word to each other as they’d travelled forward.
He’d been too amazed by the subterranean world he’d been introduced to by Savannah. Where did the other tunnels lead? How big was the network? Who knew about it besides Savannah?
He was fairly sure the answer to the question was that nobody except Savannah and now him knew about the underground network. Otherwise he would have heard about it before now. Lost Lagoon was a small town, and a secret this big would have been revealed.
He followed her up the plank steps that led them next to a large cypress tree surrounded by thick brush. The ground was spongy beneath his feet, although not wet enough to cover his shoes. There was nobody in the area, and he was glad that nobody was around to see them ascend from the ground.
Directly in front of them was the swath of land where Shelly’s “ghost” walked. He looked at Savannah, whose features were void of emotion. “So, you walk across here and then what? How do you get back to this same entrance to get back home?”
“I don’t. On the other side of the path is a hidden cave that leads back to the tunnel we were just in.” She didn’t wait for his response but quickly walked across the path that was her “stage” on nights she performed her ghost routine.
Josh hurried after her, his mind still reeling from where he’d been and what he’d seen. When they reached the other side, he followed her up a small hill through thick woods.
She stopped and pulled a tangle of vines and brush aside to reveal the mouth of a cave. Once again a sense of shock swept through him.
He’d been a deputy in Lost Lagoon for the past ten years. He’d moved to the small town from Georgia when he was twenty-one to take the position of deputy. Ten years and he hadn’t heard a whisper of the presence of the underground network.
He followed her into the mouth of the cave and found himself again in a tunnel that merged into the one they’d used from Savannah’s backyard.
They were silent as they returned the way they had come. The initial excitement and surprise of what he’d seen had passed. Instead he was acutely attuned to the air of defeat that emanated from Savannah while she walked slowly in front of him.
He dreaded the conversation to come. There was no way he could keep this information to himself. Who knew what might be found in the other tunnels? Who knew where they led? It was a historical find that should be made public to the appropriate authorities.
What surprised him was that Savannah had possessed the nerve to go down there and explore on her own. It must have been frightening the first time she’d decided to drop down that hole and follow the tunnel.
When they came back up in her backyard, the July sun and humidity were relentless. He hadn’t realized how much cooler the tunnels had been until now.
“Come on inside and I’ll get us something cold to drink,” she said without enthusiasm.
It wasn’t the best invitation he’d ever gotten from a woman, but he was hot and thirsty, and they weren’t finished with their business yet.
Once inside, he sat in the same chair at the table where he’d sat the night before. She went to the cabinet and pulled down two glasses.
She turned to look at him, her eyes dull and lifeless. “Sweet tea okay?”
“Anything cold is fine,” he replied.
She opened the refrigerator and poured the tea. She then carried the glasses to the table and sat across from him. Her eyes were now dark pools of aching sadness, so aching that he couldn’t stand to look at them.
He took a sip of the cold tea and then stared down into the glass. “You know I can’t keep this a secret,” he finally said.
“I know you can’t keep it a secret forever,” she replied.
He gazed at her, and this time in her eyes he saw a tiny spark of life, of hope. He steeled himself for the argument he had a feeling was about to happen.
God, it just took that single spark in her eyes for him to remember the woman she’d been, and he couldn’t help the swift curl of heat that warmed his belly. It was a heat of the visceral attraction he’d forgotten had once existed where she was concerned.
“Give me one more night,” she said. “Just let me have one more walk before you tell anyone about the tunnels.” She leaned forward, her eyes now positively glowing with focus. “One final walk, Josh. At least let me have that before it all blows up.”
“Savannah...”
“Those tunnels have been a secret for who knows how long,” she said, interrupting him. “Can’t you just keep them a secret for another week or so?”
He told himself it was too big, that he should report on what he’d found out immediately. He sat up straighter in his chair, determined to do the right thing, and then she surprised him. She reached across the table and covered one of his hands with hers.
“Please, Josh, all I’m asking for is a week. I can do a final ghost walk next Friday night, and then you can tell whoever you want about the tunnels.”
Her hand was warm, almost fevered over his, and for just a moment, as he stared into the dark pools of her eyes, he forgot what they’d been talking about.
He mentally shook himself and pulled his hand from beneath hers. Duty battled with the desire to do something for her, something to make up for letting her down two years before when he should have chosen real justice over his job.
He took another drink of tea and then stood. He needed to think, and at the moment he was finding it difficult to think rationally.
“I assume you’re working your usual shift tonight at the inn?” He moved toward the back door. He needed to get away from her winsome eyes, the floral scent of her that filled his head.
“Eleven to seven,” she replied. “Why?”
“I need to think about everything. I won’t say anything to anyone today, and I’ll stop by the Pirate’s Inn tonight sometime during my shift and let you know what I’ve decided to do.”
She opened her mouth as if to make one more plea, but closed it and nodded. “Then I guess I’ll see you sometime tonight.”
He left her house and walked around to his car. No patrol car today, just a nice red convertible sports car that most women would definitely consider a boy toy.
He’d bought the car a year ago, and the day he signed the ownership papers, his head had been filled with the memory of his twin brother, Jacob.
When the two boys had been growing up, they’d dreamed of owning a car like this...flashy and fast and nothing like the old family car their parents had driven. That old car had been held together by string and hope because new cars cost money the Griffin family didn’t have.
Driving to his house, he once again thought about the surprising discovery of the tunnels. The presence of them had been such a shock. Had they been made by pirates who were rumored to have used the Lost Lagoon town as a base camp? Would there be treasures and artifacts in one of those passageways that would identify who had made them and why?
It was much easier to think about the tunnels than about the woman he’d just left. But thoughts of Savannah intruded. Of the two sisters, he’d always thought she was the prettiest. She was softer, a little bit shyer than Shelly, but she’d drawn Josh to her.
She’d had a smile that lit up her face and made it impossible not to smile back at her. He wondered if she had smiled at all in the last two years.
He pulled into the driveway of his three-bedroom ranch house. He’d bought the house when it was just a shell and had added amenities like an extra-long whirlpool tub for a tall man to relax in and a walkout door from the bedroom to a private patio. He’d also put in all the bells and whistles in the kitchen area. He’d been told by the builder that it would be good for resale value.
The cost of living in Lost Lagoon was relatively low, and his salary was good, as few lawmen would choose to spend their careers in a small swamp town.
When he got inside, he sat at his kitchen table with a bottle of cold beer, and once again his head filled with visions of Savannah.
One week. That was all she’d asked for. Just seven days. But was it even right for him to indulge her in one more ghost walk? Wasn’t it better just to end it all now and hope that she got some sort of help for the grief that had obviously held her in its grip for far too long?
And what if Sheriff Trey Walker found out that he’d known about the tunnels and hadn’t come forward immediately? Trey was a tough guy who demanded 100 percent loyalty from his men. Would Josh be putting his job on the line to give Savannah what she’d asked for?
He took a long sip of his beer and reviewed his options—none of which he liked.
Chapter Three (#ulink_ad9c4f75-af1d-593e-a4d9-af3ce52dbe12)
Savannah stood behind the reception desk in the large quiet lobby of the Pirate’s Inn. The inn had two stories, and the centerpiece of the lobby was a huge, tacky treasure chest that the inn’s owner, Donnie Albright, had been repainting for the last couple of weeks.
He’d finished the six-foot-tall chest itself, painting it a bright gold, but he still had to spruce up the oversized papier-mâché and Styrofoam jewels and strings of pearls that filled the chest.
He was also in the process of re-carpeting the guest rooms, all in anticipation of the amusement park that had bought land and was building on a ridge above the small city.
Most of the businesses were eager for the park to be done, knowing that it would bring in tourists who would shop and spend their money in town. There were plenty of people in town who wanted Lost Lagoon to be “found” and hoped that would happen with the large amusement park under construction nearby.
At the moment, the last thing on Savannah’s mind was the new pirate-themed park. It was a little after 2:00 a.m., and Josh hadn’t come in yet to tell her his decision about giving her one final walk before telling other people about the tunnels.
She sat in a raised chair and began to doodle on a notepad. There was only one couple staying in the inn tonight. Beth and Greg Hemming stayed in a room at the inn once a month. They had four children, all under the age of six, and Savannah suspected the night out was not so much about romance, but more about a good night of uninterrupted sleep.
For years the inn had mostly catered to occasional people who came to Lost Lagoon to visit with family members. It was rare that real tourists stopped in for a room for the night unless they were lost and desperate to spend the night someplace before returning to their journey.
Shelly had worked as the night manager before her murder. Savannah had taken on the same job a year ago. She was certain it was the most boring job in town.
She had a degree from a culinary school and had at one time entertained the idea of opening a restaurant in town. Lost Lagoon had a pizza place, George’s Diner, which was just a cheap hamburger joint, and the café. There was no place for anyone in town to have a real fine dining experience.
That was why she had been living at home, working at the café and saving her money before Shelly’s murder. But the loss of her sister had also stolen Savannah’s dreams.
A rap on the front door drew her attention, and she grabbed the ring of keys that would unlock the front door. The inn was always locked up for security purposes when she arrived for her shift at eleven.
She rounded the monstrous, gaudy treasure chest to see Josh standing outside. Her heart fluttered unexpectedly at the sight of him, so tall and handsome in his khaki uniform.
It was impossible to tell what news he brought by the lack of expression on his face. She fumbled with the key and finally got the door unlocked to allow him inside.
“Busy night?” she asked as she led him back to the reception area where, in front of the desk, two sofas faced each other and were separated by a large square wooden coffee table.
“Probably no busier than yours,” he replied. He sat on one end of a sofa, and she sat on the other. “Any guests in the house?”
“Beth and Greg Hemming are in room 202.”
“No sightings of old Peg Leg or his drunken friend?” There was a touch of amusement in his eyes as he mentioned the most popular “ghosts” in town.
“Donnie probably made up that story about pirate ghosts haunting the hallways when he first bought this place years ago,” she replied and wished he’d just get to the point.
“With the new pirate theme park going up, I imagine Donnie is anticipating lots of guests in the future.”
“There are certainly going to be big changes around here when the park is finished next summer,” she replied.
“Whoever thought Lost Lagoon, Mississippi, would become a family vacation destination? I expect we’ll see some new businesses popping up in the near future.”
“Josh,” she said impatiently.
“Okay, you don’t want small talk. You want to know what I’ve decided to do about the tunnels.” The blue of his eyes darkened slightly.
She had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. If eyes were the windows to the soul, then she was about to be bitterly disappointed.
“I stewed about it all day. You know I have to tell, but I’m willing to wait until next Saturday on one condition. Friday night, when you do your final walk, I go with you.”
“I’ve been making these walks alone for the last year. It isn’t necessary for you to come with me,” she protested. He threatened her just a little bit. He was too sexy, his smile was too warm. He radiated a vibrant energy that felt dangerous to her.
“That’s the deal, Savannah. I go with you next Friday night, or tomorrow I tell Trey about the tunnels.”
She could tell by his firm tone that he meant it. She should be grateful that he had given her as much as he had. “All right,” she said. “I appreciate you giving me one last walk. I go down into the tunnel about eleven thirty or so. If you aren’t by the bush at that time next Friday, I won’t wait for you.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be there,” he assured her and stood. She got up as well and followed him back to the door. “So, we have a date next Friday night,” he said, the charming amusement back in his eyes.
“A date under duress,” she replied coyly.
He pushed open the door to leave but turned back to look at her. “You know, you might try walking in the sunshine sometime. It’s so much better than walking in the shadows.”
He didn’t wait for a reply but turned and walked away. She locked the door after him and returned to the chair behind the desk.
She didn’t even want to contemplate his parting words. He knew nothing about her, nothing about her life...her loss. All she had to do was see him one last time, next Friday night, and then she wouldn’t have to see Deputy Josh Griffin again.
The night passed uneventfully, and by seven, when owner Donnie Albright showed up to relieve her, she was exhausted. She’d spent most of the quiet night as she usually did, sitting and trying not to think, not to feel.
Once at home, she changed out of the tailored blouse and black slacks she wore to work and into a sleeveless cotton nightgown and then fell into bed. The dark shades at her bedroom window kept out the sunlight, and she didn’t have to worry about phone calls or unexpected guests interrupting her sleep.
Since Mac had moved out, the only person who ever came by the house was Chad Wilson, who delivered groceries to her once a week on Thursday afternoons.
Because she was off Thursdays and Fridays, she always got special items to cook on those days, meals she might have served customers in her own restaurant if her world hadn’t fallen apart.
She finally fell asleep and dreamed of days gone by, when Shelly and Bo were a couple and she often spent time with them. Bo often teased that he was the luckiest guy in the world, with two beautiful women on his arms. He’d been like a brother to her, and she’d grieved the loss of his friendship almost as deeply as she did Shelly.
Her dream transformed, and a vision of Josh filled her mind. He held her in his arms, his body fitting close against her own as his lips covered hers in a kiss that seared fire through her.
She awakened irritated that the sexy lawman had held any place at all in her dreams.
For the next four days, she went to work each night and came home each morning and slept. In the late afternoons, when she was awake, she vegged out in front of the television, trying not to think about the fact that Friday night would be her final tribute to her sister.
She was almost grateful on Thursday afternoon when Chad showed up with the bags of groceries she’d ordered the day before from the grocery store.
Although she’d always found the thirtysomething deliveryman a bit odd, he brought her not only the things she wanted to cook but also a wealth of gossip.
If Josh hadn’t held up his end of their bargain, she would know about it from Chad. He’d tell her all about the discovery of the tunnels and the exploration that was taking place.
She answered his knock on the back door and allowed him and his grocery bags inside the kitchen. “How are you doing today, Savannah?” he asked with his usual good cheer. As always, his dark brown hair stood up in spikes, and his caramel-colored eyes danced around the room as if unable to focus on any one spot.
“Good. How about you?” she asked. He placed the bags on the table, and she began to unload them.
“I’ve been busy today. Old Ethel Rogers fell and broke her hip last week, so I made a delivery to her earlier. You look pretty in that sundress. You should get out of this house more often.”
“Thank you for the compliment,” she replied. “What else is going on around town?”
He sat at the table as she continued to unpack and put away the food. “Mayor Jim Burns is pressuring all the businesses on Main Street to update and renovate their shops, and some people aren’t happy about it. Former mayor Frank Kean is buzzing around between town and the construction site for the new park, and Claire Silver and Bo McBride got engaged.”
He slapped his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you that last part.”
Savannah smiled. “No, it’s okay. I hope he and Claire will be very happy together.” She wasn’t surprised they had found love together, and she wanted love for Bo. He would always hold a special place in her heart as the man who had once loved Shelly.
“You know, maybe we could go out some time,” Chad said. “Maybe have dinner at the café. You know, just casual-like.” His gaze moved from her to the stove and then back to her.
“I’m sorry, Chad. It’s nothing personal, but I don’t go out.”
He frowned. “Are you sure it’s nothing personal? I know I don’t have a great job, and I’m not as smart as a lot of people.”
“It has nothing to do with that, and I think you’re very smart,” she quickly replied. “I think you’re very nice. It has nothing to do with you, Chad. I just don’t go out with anyone.”
Chad appeared satisfied with her answer. He stayed until the last food item had been put away, and then he left. She’d had a feeling that he had a crush on her, but she never played to it.
All she really knew about him was that he worked for his mother, Sharon, at the grocery store and lived in a small apartment in the back of the store. He was a pleasant-looking man, but he was a bit slow.
Today had been the first time he’d actually asked her out. She hoped she hadn’t hurt his feelings by turning him down.
Dismissing those thoughts, she focused all her attention on pulling out the ingredients she needed to make Cajun skillet fillets. There was nothing better than beef fillets and shrimp paired with a special blend of blackening spices and lobster stock. She decided to cook a side of fresh asparagus in garlic and butter.
The only time she allowed any happiness to fill her heart, to seep into her soul, was when she cooked. All of her thoughts, all of her energy went into the food.
There were many times Sharon special-ordered items for her because the local store didn’t carry much in the way of specialty foods.
It didn’t take long for the kitchen to fill with a variety of wonderful scents. It brought back the times that Savannah’s mother had cooked delicious meals for the family. She was always experimenting and tweaking recipes and was responsible for Savannah’s love of cooking.
She cooked two steaks and a dozen shrimp, deciding that she’d eat the second portion the next night...the night she walked for the last time as Shelly’s ghost.
It was six o’clock and everything was ready for plating when the doorbell rang. She nearly jumped out of her skin. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard the chime indicating somebody was at the front door.
She looked out the peephole to see Josh on the front porch. Had he changed his mind about giving her tomorrow night? She opened the door, and he greeted her with the sexy smile that twisted her heart in an uncomfortable way.
“What a surprise,” she said as she opened the door to allow him inside.
“Since it was one of my nights off, I just thought I’d stop by and check in before tomorrow night,” he said. “Hmm, something smells terrific.”
“It’s dinner. I was just about to put it on a plate.”
“Smells like a lucky plate,” he replied.
She thought of the two steaks and the dozen shrimp. “Are you hungry? I have plenty if you’d like to join me.”
His eyes lit with pleasure. “I’d love to join you.”
As he followed her into the kitchen, she wondered what in the world had possessed her to invite him to dinner. She told herself the reason was that she had to play nice with him until after tomorrow night, and then she wouldn’t have to play with him at all.
She gestured him to a seat at the table as she moved to the cabinet to get down another plate. She didn’t know what to say. She’d forgotten how to make small talk. It was a surprising revelation.
“I assume you’ve had a quiet week,” he finally said, breaking what had grown into an awkward silence.
“I always have quiet weeks.” She filled two glasses with iced tea and added them and silverware to the table, then returned to the stove to put the food on the plates. “What about you?”
He leaned back in the chair, looking relaxed, as if he belonged there. “Let’s see. On Monday night I got a call of an intruder in the attic of Mildred Samps’s house. It turned out to be a raccoon that had gotten in through a hole in the eaves. I called out Chase Marshall from Fish and Game, and he managed to get the creature out.”
“Tell me more,” she said as she focused on plating the food in a visually pleasing way. She’d much rather listen to him talk than have to talk herself.
“On Tuesday night I was called out to Jimmy’s Place to break up a fight between two drunks.”
She glanced at him in surprise. “Jimmy doesn’t usually let things get out of control like that, and I still think of it as Bo’s Place.”
“Bo definitely had a flair for bringing in a crowd when he owned it. Jimmy doesn’t have Bo’s natural charisma. Anyway, that brings us to last night, when there were no calls and I just drove up and down the streets for hours. Working the night shift in this town isn’t all that challenging.”
“I’m sure there are times when a good deputy is necessary after dark. Isn’t that when bad things happen?” She delivered the plates to the table.
“Jeez, it all looks too pretty to eat. Do you cook like this every night?”
She sat at the table across from him and shook her head. “Usually just on my nights off.”
“That’s right. I just remembered that you went to culinary school in Jackson. Didn’t I hear somewhere that you were going to open a restaurant at one time?”
“That was another lifetime,” she replied. “Dig in while it’s warm.”
He cut into the steak and took a bite. “This is amazingly delicious. You should put opening that restaurant in this lifetime.”
She felt the warmth of a blush creep into her cheeks, along with a flush of pleasure that swept over her at his words, but it lasted only a moment. “I don’t have the passion I once had for cooking for other people.”
He popped a shrimp in his mouth and chased it with a drink of tea. He gazed at her curiously. “So, what do you have a passion for these days?”
“Keeping Shelly’s memory alive.” The one thing he was taking away from her. “Besides, as far as I’m concerned, passion is vastly overrated,” she added. “What about you? What do you feel passionate about?”
“My job, this town and the people I serve,” he answered easily.
“What about a girlfriend?” She was just curious. She certainly didn’t care one way or the other whether he had a girlfriend or not.
“Nobody special. Although I’m ready to find the woman who will be by my side for the rest of my life, the woman who will give me some kids, and we’ll all live happily ever after.” He laughed. “I sound like a woman whose biological clock is ticking.”
His words brought a smile to Savannah’s lips. “You sound like a man ready to move into a new phase of life.”
He stared at her. “You should do that more often. I’d forgotten how you look when you smile.”
“Eat your dinner,” she replied as a new warmth filled her. She was ready for him to leave. He confused her. He made her feel uncomfortable. He had no place at her table, and she had been impulsive in inviting him in.
He seemed attuned to her discomfort. He ate quickly and didn’t ask her any more questions but rather kept up an easy monologue about his work, the new amusement park and the changes that were already happening in the town.
When they’d finished eating, she insisted he not help with the cleanup but instead hurried him toward the front door. “Thanks for the unexpected meal,” he said. His eyes had gone dark blue like deep, unfathomable waters.
“No problem,” she replied. Away from the kitchen with all its cooking scents, she could smell his cologne and remembered the brief moment of being held in his arms while she wept in the tunnel.
“Then we’re still on for tomorrow night?” he asked.
“Definitely. We’ll meet at the bush in the backyard at around eleven thirty or so tomorrow night.”
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
She breathed a sigh of relief as she closed and locked the door behind him. She sank into a nearby chair, the scent of him still filling her head.
There had been a time when she’d been certain he was going to ask her out, and there had been a time when she’d desperately hoped he would. He’d been the one man in town who had managed to quicken her heartbeat at the mere sight of him.
They had flirted outrageously with each other whenever they were together in a group. Shelly had teased her unmercifully about her crush on Josh.
But that had been before life had kicked her so hard she didn’t want to play anymore. She’d picked up her marbles and crawled into a cave where she felt safe and secure, a place where no more hurt could touch her again.
She got up from the chair and went back into the kitchen to clear the dishes from the table and clean up the rest of her cooking mess, dismissing any more thoughts of Josh.
She slept late the next morning, as was her custom with her night job, and spent most of the afternoon and evening restlessly pacing the floor, cleaning things that were already clean, both anticipating and dreading the night to come.
By eleven o’clock she was in the bathroom, using powder to whiten her face and already clad in her “ghost” costume for the last time.
Tonight she would hear Shelly’s name shouted, and after tonight she didn’t know if she would ever hear anyone speak of her sister again. It was as if Shelly was dying a second time, and this time it would be final.
By eleven thirty, she was at the bush, waiting for Josh to arrive. She couldn’t ignore the aching sadness in her heart and yet also knew that these Shelly walks were a part of her that wasn’t quite rational.
She waited impatiently, expecting Josh to show up any moment. But minutes passed, and when she’d waited fifteen minutes, she had to move. She’d warned him that if he wasn’t here on time, she’d go it alone, as she had so many times in the past year.
With a final glance around the backyard and no sign of Josh in sight, she slipped down the rabbit hole and turned on her penlight.
Everyone knew that Shelly’s “ghost” usually showed up on Friday nights around midnight. She couldn’t let down her “fans” by being late. She’d even heard from Chad one time that young teenagers planned slumber parties and included coming to watch for Shelly’s ghost as part of the night’s activities.
She moved through the tunnel more quickly than usual, all the while listening for the sound of Josh coming down to join her.
Tomorrow this place would probably be crawling with people. Experts of one sort or another would explore all the passageways, try to date the network, and eventually there might even be tours set up by the town, eager to make money off the unexpected find.
She reached the planks that would take her up, surprised that she’d heard nothing to indicate that Josh was somewhere behind her. He’d obviously been held up by something.
She went up the steps and crouched by the trunk of the tree. For a moment the only things she heard were the croak of frogs and the splash of water from the nearby lagoon.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if there was nobody hiding behind the bushes tonight, nobody to witness this final tribute to her dead sister? Then she heard them...the giggling and whispering of her audience. Thank goodness she wouldn’t make this last walk without anyone to watch.
When she thought it was just around midnight, she turned on the flashlight that gave her the otherworldly glow. She made her walk as cries of her sister’s name filled the air.
Shelly. Savannah missed her so badly. Without these walks, Shelly would eventually become completely irrelevant and forgotten. The fact ached in Savannah’s heart.
When she reached the other side, she turned off the light and hurried to the opening of the cave. She disappeared inside and leaned weakly against the earthen wall of the tunnel.
It was done. It was over. Now the memory of Shelly would remain only in her mind. Perhaps for several weeks, maybe even a month or so, teenagers would gather behind the bushes to see her “ghost,” but when no more appearances occurred, eventually they’d find something else to do on their Friday nights.
Turning on her penlight, she then began the trek back to where she’d begun. Weary sadness moved her feet slowly. Her parents rarely spoke to her. She had no relationship with Mac. Now her last link to Shelly had been broken.
She’d been alone for the past two years, but now she felt an emptiness, a depth of loneliness she’d never felt before. You’ll be fine, a little voice whispered in her head. And she would be okay. She still had her work at the inn and her nights of cooking, and that was all she really needed.
She had three more dark offshoot passageways to go by, and then she’d be home. As she started past the first one, a hand reached out and grabbed her by the arm.
She shrieked in shock and yanked backward. She crashed to the ground, the penlight falling just out of her reach. Panic and terror shot through her as somebody or something grabbed her by the foot and began to drag her into the dark tunnel.
She kicked and clawed the ground in an effort to get away, but whoever had her was strong, and she felt herself being slowly pulled into the blackness of the unknown corridor.
Chapter Four (#ulink_0efc64df-58c5-57a6-89a0-026bdaed89b3)
“You both need to stop this cycle,” Josh said impatiently. He glared at the couple seated on a sagging sofa in one of the shanties that stood near the swamp on the west side of town.
Daisy Wilcox sported a split lip, and her husband, Judd, had scratch marks down his cheek. This wasn’t the first time Josh had been called here for a domestic situation.
“I should just take you both in, let you spend some time in jail,” Josh said, aware that time was ticking by and it was just a few minutes before he was supposed to meet Savannah in her backyard.
“It was just a little lover’s spat,” Daisy protested and grabbed Judd’s hand. “I overreacted and shouldn’t have called the sheriff’s office. We’re fine now. There’s no reason to arrest us.”
“Yeah, we’re cool,” Judd said and patted his wife’s ample thigh.
The small room reeked of alcohol and pot. Daisy’s words were slurred and Judd’s pupils were huge. Josh had cause to take them in, but they weren’t bad people. They were part of the poor of Lost Lagoon, swamp people who had little hope and tried to escape that hopelessness by masking their pain with whatever was available.
Besides, if he ran them in, there would be paperwork to fill out, processes that needed to be followed. It all took time, and he was aware of every minute that ticked by. In any case, each of them would refuse to press charges against the other, and it would all be a waste of time.
“If I’m called out here again tonight, then you’re both going to be arrested,” he warned them as he had a dozen times before. “Put the booze and whatever else you’re using away and stop this nonsense.”
“We will,” Daisy replied and leaned into her husband. She smiled up at Judd. “You know I love you, baby.”
Judd returned her smile. “Back at you, babe.”
Minutes later, as Josh drove to Savannah’s house, he thought about the couple he’d just left. About once a month one officer or another was called to the address to respond to a fight.
Usually by the time the officer got there, the fight was over and the two were lovebirds once again. Their injuries were usually superficial and always sported by both. Josh swore to himself that the next time he was called out there, he would make arrests and let the both of them cool their heels in jail and hopefully make them think about abuse and love. Some people just didn’t get it. Love wasn’t supposed to hurt.
His thoughts quickly shifted to Savannah as he looked at the clock on his dashboard and cursed inwardly. It was midnight. She was probably already making her ghostly walk.
By the time he parked in her driveway and ran to the backyard, he figured he might as well just wait. She should be coming back up at any moment.
Dammit, he’d wanted to take this final walk with her. Even though he thought what she was doing was more than a little bit crazy, he knew tonight’s walk would be emotionally difficult for her.
He’d wanted to be by her side. The darkness of her eyes and the obvious emptiness in her life haunted him. He felt partially responsible for how isolated she’d become, for the obvious grief that still ate at her.
He had so many memories of the laughing, flirting Savannah who had stirred his senses, a woman he’d wanted desperately. He wanted to find that woman again, to help her heal not just for herself, but for him. Time hadn’t erased his desire for her.
Would things have been different for her if he’d pushed Sheriff Trey Walker in the investigation of Shelly’s murder? If the case had been closed and the killer was behind bars, would that have given Savannah the closure she needed to move forward in a meaningful way?
The problem was, she had nobody to offer her support and encouragement. Her parents had left town, and she apparently wasn’t close to her brother. Whatever friends she’d possessed had either drifted away or been shoved away by her, leaving her alone to cope...and she hadn’t coped.
Every muscle in his body stiffened as he thought he heard a faint cry coming from the hole in the ground. He turned on his flashlight and shone it down, seeing nothing but earth.
Had he heard her crying? Weeping because she knew this was the end of her walks? Should he go down and console her? Or let her cry in private? He had a feeling that if she was crying, she wouldn’t welcome his presence.
He heard her again, only this time instead of weeping, it sounded like a scream of terror. With his gun in one hand, his flashlight in the other and adrenaline pumping through his body, he dropped down into the hole.
The first thing he saw was the penlight beam, shining at him from the floor in the distance. What he didn’t see was any sign of Savannah.
“Savannah!” He yelled her name and it echoed in the air.
He quickly walked forward, his gun leading the way and his heart pounding a million beats a minute. Where was Savannah? Why was her flashlight on the ground? What in the hell was happening?
“Josh, help!” Her cry seemed to come from all sides of him. He moved faster, and when he came to the first entrance of an offshoot tunnel, he spun to shine his flashlight and gun down into the darkness.
“Savannah,” he shouted again.
“I’m here.” Her voice came again. He shone his light back up the main tunnel and saw her crawling out of one of the offshoot passageways ahead of him.
He ran toward her, his heart still beating at a dizzying speed. She crawled toward him and began to cry. Before he reached her, she got to her feet and raced toward him, slamming into his chest and holding tightly to him. “Somebody grabbed me,” she managed to gasp between sobs. “He tried to drag me down the tunnel.”
Josh peeled her away from him. “Get out of here and get into your house. I need to check it out.”
She grabbed his arm. “Be careful.” She quickly turned and hurried toward the exit. Josh shone his light on her until he saw her leave the tunnel. Then he turned around and headed forward.
Every nerve, every sense he possessed tingled with hyperawareness as he approached the passageway where, according to Savannah, somebody had jumped out and grabbed her.
He didn’t even want to think about how frightened she’d been, how filthy she’d looked and how helpless she’d appeared crawling along the floor out of the unexplored tunnel.
When he reached the place she’d crawled out of, he shone his light to illuminate the utter blackness of the underground. Nothing. He couldn’t see anything as far as his flashlight beam could reach.
Tightening his grip on his gun, he walked down the unfamiliar tunnel. There was nothing to distinguish it from the one he’d just left. He followed it until he came to a fork and didn’t know which way to go. Uncertain whether he could find his way back if he ventured too far, he gave up the hunt. Besides, he imagined Savannah’s attacker was long gone by now.
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